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The global leadership of Carlos Ghosn at Nissan
Author(s) -
Millikin John P.,
Fu Dean
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
thunderbird international business review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.553
H-Index - 37
eISSN - 1520-6874
pISSN - 1096-4762
DOI - 10.1002/tie.20043
Subject(s) - citation , editorial board , library science , executive committee , management , political science , sociology , media studies , law , computer science , economics
In 1991 Nissan was one of the most successful car companies in the world. The Japanese company produced four of the top ten cars in the world and was well known for its advanced engineering and technology, plant productivity and quality management. Over the next eight years, Nissan’s management employed a conservative strategy harvesting the success of proven designs and investing retained earnings into the equity of other companies to foster loyalty and cooperation between members of Nissan’s value chain in its keiretsu. This conservative strategy may have been viable if it had produced significant cost savings, which it did not, or if the Asian financial crisis had not occurred or the Japanese economy had not been mired in a recession. Unfortunately, with the convergence of several challenges, Nissan found itself in February, 1999 on the edge of insolvency with Standard & Poor’s threatening to downgrade Nissan’s credit rating to junk status if it could not secure financial support from another automobile company.